Archipelago and Haven: Are You on the List?

With restaurant-opening season come clipboards and the publicists who wield them, and Nation’s Restaurant News ed Bret Thorn would appreciate it if they were a little better at their jobs: “You’d think if you showed up at a restaurant opening and spoke to someone near the entranceway holding a clipboard and told her your name, she wouldn’t look at you dumbfounded, wondering why you were talking to her.” But at the opening of Archipelago,”The Japanese woman with the clipboard at the door seemed dumbfounded that I would speak to her.” Then, at another opening that same night:

Haven seemed, well, very much like all the others, only on this evening it had a velvet rope and young women with clipboards doing crowd control. They, too, had some difficulty, as you had to remember which of two women you RSVP’ed to so they could look on the correct clipboard. You’d think that could be consolidated in 2008.”

You’d think, yes, but you also thought a clipboard girl wouldn’t be dumbfounded. It’s fall madness: Systems are broken, logic is defied. As far as we’re concerned, it’s total freaking anarchy out there.